Creator of Canada's maple leaf flag was proud of his Calgary roots

George Stanley’s history as a Calgary resident and Rhodes Scholar-turned-national-flag-designer may fly under the radar. But such roots, says Cynthia Klaasen, president of the Calgary Heritage Initiative, is something Calgarians should celebrate.

While Canadians proudly pay homage to their national flag this Sunday, Davinder (Davi) Singh will help his team serve duck confit poutine for lunch guests at the Laurier Lounge in downtown Calgary.

It’s a fete befitting the late George Stanley, a man widely regarded as a founding father of the Canadian flag, who also happened to grow up in this turn-of-the-century house — now a French restaurant at the corner of 11th Avenue and 7th Street S.W.

Stanley’s history as a Calgary resident and Rhodes Scholar-turned-national-flag-designer may fly under the radar. But such roots, says Cynthia Klaasen, president of the Calgary Heritage Initiative, is something Calgarians should celebrate.

“It’s a lot of fun that the designer of the Canadian flag actually had Calgary roots even though he was living in Kingston at the time he came up with the design,” says Klaasen. “(It) gives Calgary a connection to an important part of Canada’s national identity.”

Stanley was born in 1907 to well-to-do, conservative parents who hobnobbed with local leading figures. His father owned a wholesale paper business and spoke fluent Chinese.

“They were the merchant professional class — the first generation of people from Eastern Canada who settled the West,” says son-in-law and history buff John Blackwell, of Antigonish, N.S., who is married to Stanley’s youngest daughter, Dr. Laurie Stanley-Blackwell, a history professor at St. Francis Xavier University.

Stanley might have been impressed to learn his old house is now named after a Liberal Prime Minister. “We were amused by that; George’s dad was a lifelong Conservative,” says Ruth Stanley, George’s widow, from her home in Sackville, N.B.

George Stanley was a proud Albertan who talked about his western heritage and spending “carefree summers” at the Stanley family cottage in Banff.

“That was his ideal place — one of the places he was happiest in his life,” says Blackwell.

“The mountains were his playground,” adds Ruth, 93. “When (he’d come back from a trip to Alberta), he’d be hard to live with for the next six weeks because there were no mountains — Sackville is very flat.”

Stanley’s life in the West was also where he developed an intrinsic sense of humility, compassion and a regard for Canadian culture. When he was 17 he taught school in the small town of Hussar, Alta., which was alarmingly different from Stanley’s urban lifestyle. Stanley witnessed dire poverty and Blackwell says it pained him to watch his new friends “struggling against this adversity.”

“He was always conscious of that. I think it made him extremely compassionate. He never forgot these people,” Blackwell asserts.

Another Stanley daughter, Della, a historian and professor emeritus of Canadian Studies at Mount St. Vincent University in Halifax, vividly remembers the night her father composed his infamous “Flag Memo,” later presented by MP and flag committee member John Matheson on March 23, 1964.

She says Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson was anxious to have the new flag become a unifying symbol ­— replacing the conservative and colonial Red Ensign and Union Jack original flags.

“The union jack was so British that for aboriginal people, for new Canadians, for French Canadians, it didn’t mean anything,” she says.

In his four-page memo, George Stanley laid out sketches for two designs — one was a single maple leaf with two red bars, the other depicted three red maple leafs and two red bars.

Stanley offered the former as his first choice for its simplicity, the fact it represented Canada’s national colours and would be visible from a distance and easily identifiable.

Blackwell says Stanley’s flag vision was influenced by that of the Royal Military College where he taught in Kingston, Ont. Laurie Stanley-Blackwell adds the 1928 Olympics also played a role. Canadian sprinter Percy Williams donned the red maple leaf and white jersey, leaving “a very indelible impression” and “driving home the importance of the maple leaf.”

On a cold winter’s day, Feb. 15, 1965, Stanley’s national flag design, with touch-ups and technical additions attributed to other contributors, became Canada’s official symbol.

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